Across Southern Maryland and our nation this Memorial Day, our citizens and veterans will gather to pay homage to America’s finest men and women who gave their lives in defense of freedom.
Honored will be those who gave what Abraham Lincoln called the “last full measure of devotion” in the fight for our liberty.
It’s worth noting that our nation was at war 230 years ago as the American Revolution ended in 1783, and it was 200 years ago when our soldiers were dying on the battlefield in the War of 1812. It was 150 years ago, in 1863, after the greatest battle ever fought on American soil, that Lincoln uttered the words of the Gettysburg address as our nation dedicated “a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who gave their lives so our nation might live.”
Seventy years ago, more Americans were dying in World War II. In 1953, we ended the Korean War. In 1973, we ended the Vietnam War. And perhaps next year, we end the fighting in Afghanistan.
Wars are not without their glory. They are not without heroes. But they bring such wretched loss of loved ones. Lincoln questioned that loss, as a man who knew loss, when he said, “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
Our nation is richly populated in cemeteries for our veterans. In private cemeteries, both large and small, and no matter how remote, are the stones and markers on the last resting places of the men and women who Lincoln called, “these honored dead.”
Further, he said it was the job of the living to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure.” Therein lies the key to the underlying reason to honor our nation’s war dead. We here, living today, have them to thank. The saying that they gave all their tomorrows so that we could have our todays is certainly most true on Memorial Day.
Lincoln knew even more the heavy burden of that responsibility. He said at Gettysburg that we “can never forget what they did here.” Lincoln went on to say it is the living who must complete the promise of the founding principles of our nation.
More than 1.2 million Americans — men and women — have perished as a result of military conflicts. Because of them, we are able to live in a free society that even our most desperate enemies admire. Who knows what these men and women could have attained? We will never know what was lost, but without a doubt, many were destined to have a major impact on our lives and society. Their skills, knowledge, ideas and the very uniqueness of their individuality were forever lost to us.
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